Several years ago (looking at archive.org it was at the end of 2001) I wrote a database that translated IPs to locations. Very similar to the city-db from maxmind.com. Perhaps someone still remembers the article in the iX about it ?

Anyway, now it is time to release the idea to the public. The idea is a distributed, open-source IP to location translation. Source comes later.

The basic idea

The idea behind IP-to-location translation is pretty old already. For I stumbled over it when I was running traceroute to some IP addresses on IRC. If you are in city-specific channels, you can easy proof if the basic idea works or not.

# traceroute -w 1 -q 1 …

Totally expectable, the sun has gone up and down for the past two weeks since Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion and we still trust in MySQL – do we trust in Sun?

In fact, Sun paid a high premium for MySQL’s credibility (aka brand value) to benefit from the high profile of the cute dolphin publicly. MySQL simply knows how to play the Open Source game right, that’s their largest asset. How high is it actually?

Let’s look at MySQL’s reputation management:

• MySQL is everybody’s Open Source darling. Their consistent brand design created trust and allowed for the amortization of goodwill.
• In the past 5 years, there was no proof of the viability of an Open Source business model without mentioning MySQL. MySQL is an Open Source thought leader.
• MySQL is the M in LAMP. Any doubts?

…

We are working hard on the next Workbench Beta release that should be out mid next week. It will include a list of top priority bug fixes as usual but also two new additions that have been requested by our beta testers.

The new Online Update menu item allows to update your current installation to the latest available release right from within the tool. No need manually browse web pages anymore - at least if you are using the MSI based packages. The reason we are not offering this for the zip packages is that an automatic update is tricky since you might have made a custom install based on your needs. If you are using the zip packages you can keep using the normal Version Check menu item that will inform you about the version you have installed and if a new release is available.

The second addition is a better reporting after schema diffs. We added the templating engine (thanks Google for ctemplate!) …

Yesterday here at the MySQL-Sun Integration Kickoff, MySQL Co-Founder Michael “Monty” Widenius and I met with Sun’s CTO Greg Papadopoulos. For the beginning of the meeting, also Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz popped in.

And just as when the founders met Sun’s Rich Lang and David Douglas prior to the agreement being announced, this was a very positive meeting. Lots of mutual respect, and lots of mutual interest in listening to what the other party has to say. Relaxed atmosphere, full of anticipation.

The areas touched upon ranged from the right for developers to spend time on other FOSS projects besides MySQL, over the newly released Maria storage engine to possibilities for deep technical integration between MySQL and Sun’s software and hardware.

I could sense a mutual hunger for action, for change, and for making things happen. …

I've been dealing with a security product from a security company in recent days that breaks best practices with respect to the database configuration. This has reminded me of the list of issues I've seen over the past six months that have raised my ire. I'll rail mostly at products that use SQL Server as the back-end, but I'll save the last example for one that uses MySQL. It's not the database products that are weak. It's the application implementation on them!

Case #1: Don't EVER use SA and don't enable the network if you don't have to!

This said security product recommends the use of SQL Server if you are using it on over 1,000 users. Okay, no problem. It wants its own instance. Okay... that raises a flag in and of itself. Is performance really that bad? Well, no, not likely. Here's the kicker:

To install the application you must use the sa account. Not a service account with sysadmin rights …

I have seen too many date fields that have been named after reserved key words that I need to make an entry for this... It's like naming your kid "Kid". Wait a sec... that's happened many times before as well.I will make a "Proper Naming Conventions" page for mySQL after checking a few more sources first, but this date naming issue cannot wait another day.Thus..First Rule: Do not use a reserved

For a split second, I thought Jonathan said he thought of Sun’s acquisition of MySQL as “hypocritical”. Of course, what he said was “Hippocratical”, in the sense of the old Greek with the oath for doctors: “Do no harm.”

Jonathan appeared in front of the integration team with MySQL and Sun employees here in Menlo Park. What he said was very comfortable to hear for MySQLers old and new:

• Jonathan sees a great strategic fit between MySQL and Sun, and that’s the prime precondition for any good acquisition.
• The strategic fit thinking is seconded by financial analysts and technical observers alike.
• “Honour the community“: Jonathan sees the community of MySQL users as the starting point for all decisions related to the integration.
• “Honour the employees“: Jonathan respects the group of MySQL …

Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) never was a real transactional database engine, and never pretended to be that. It was designed to handle large data volumes and slam a commit in between every couple of thousand rows to prevent the databases from chocking on the logging problem.

However, more and more people are using Kettle transformations in a transactional way. They want to have the option to roll back any change that happened to a database during the execution of a transformation in case anything goes wrong.

Well, we have been working on that in the past, but never quite got it right… until today actually. As part of bug report 724 I lifted the decision to commit or roll back all databases to the transformation level.

Take for example a look at this transformation:

What happens is …

We just had an internal discussion about if sticking with PHP limits your career options. And just now (coincidence?) I noticed blog posts in the PHP and MySQL community noting similar concerns. The issue is that there is simply not enough top qualified talent that knows LAMP well enough to hire. Or maybe its just too hard to find them? It seems all the good guys are already hired. As a result companies end up looking for other technology, not because they actually believe that these technologies are any better or worth the license fees that these usually require to be paid up ..

So whats the problem here? Well I think one of the key issues is that LAMP focus on solving issues with a very non academic way. This implies that …

We're looking for an experienced and motivated MySQL DBA to help make things go at Flickr.

We're looking for a DBA with strong LAMP background.

Specific Duties:
? Work with engineers on performance tuning, query optimization, index tuning.
? Monitor databases for problems and to diagnose where those problems are.
? Work with Senior DBA to maintain a scalable, reliable, and robust database environment.
? Build database tools and scripts to automate where possible.
? Support MySQL databases for production and development.
? Provide 24x7 escalated on-call support on a pager rotation.

Requirements & Education:
? 3-4+ years MySQL experience.
? 2+ years of experience as a MySQL DBA in a high traffic, transactional environment.
? 2+ years working in a LAMP environment, particularly PHP/MySQL combination.
? Proficient with database performance …